Transforming international living into personal and professional progress

June 5, 2008

Doing business

If you think that doing business in Italy is not an easy affair, you are right. I happened on a site called "Doing Business" that "provides objective measures of business regulations and their enforcement across 178 countries and selected cities at the subnational and regional level"and thought I would share the page on Italy.

Overall Italy currently ranks number 53 for "Ease of doing business", slipping three places from last year. The sub-areas that slipped positions the most this year include: ease in trading across borders, getting credit and starting a business. Ranked n. 1 overall was Singapore, followed by New Zealand and the U.S.. Italy is tucked in between Botswana (n. 51), Mongolia (n. 52) and "St Vincent and the Grenadines" (n. 54).

Without getting into the details (you can just "click" above, if the subject is of interest), it is enough to say that it was no surprise to find that "time" (sometimes twice as many days) and "costs" (up to 3 or even 4 times the OECD average for some procedures) stood out as the culprits.

Oh well, in the meantime, I'm picking up coaching clients worldwide via Skype and phone -- one way to avoid it all is to move up and out into cyberspace! Not many folk out there taking on the daunting task of Doing Business in Italy...

3 comments:

What the report omits is reference to business culture. For me this might include cultural aspects relating to whehter stuff get done--do people do what they say, when they say will do it, how they say theu will do it.Another observation is that some countries seem to function well in spite of their very low rank on the index. I have confronted cultural and legal challenges in Brazil, which is ranked at 122, about the lowest ranked big successful country.In spite of that, Brazil seems to be doing very well for its people and would probably rank near the top of the list in most other measures.Thank you for your blog.Jonathan Kronerhttp://jonathankroner.com/

Here are two books for you to read about Italian footbal: A Season With Verona by Tim Parks and The Miracle of Castel di Sangro by Joe McGinniss. John Grisham also wrote a novel about playing in Parma called Playing for Pizza but it is not worth your time.You can read them while your family is watching....Beth

Hi Jonthan, thanks for stopping by. I agree that the figures do not tell the whole story without the business culture aspect. I did another post on Massimo Mezzaroma's decision to not enrol his premier league volleyball team in next year's championship. THe issues were exactly the ones you stated. would love to talk shop sometime!

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About Me

In Rome for over half my life, I have adapted, but continue to grow and strive to thrive. It is a process, but it can be fun.
As a Coach and Cross-Cultural Trainer, I help international professionals, their spouses and their organizations move from survive to thrive. Living in a different cultural environment can be a catalyst for personal and professional progress